Next season is the greatest season ever. Ever. Prepare yourself by reading the fuck out of this guide.

Here’s the chart that I modified. Click it for a bigger version. This is your tl;dr guide if you want an easy reference. My descriptions go in the order of this chart, although the order is arbitrary and not an indication of the shows’ presumed quality.

The Good Stuff

Mirai Nikki (Future Diary)

Boom! The greatest manga of all time is now in anime form. If you haven’t read Mirai Nikki before, you’re in for the greatest fucking treat of your life. Also, Tokyopop can fuck right off a bridge for dying before releasing the last two volumes of this manga. My collection is ruined, you fuckers.

For the uninitiated, this show is all about a game played with cell phones. There are 12 people participants whose cell phones have a special ability based on what they primarily used their phones to do. The main character always writes about the future on his cell phone, hence his cell phone allows him a glimpse into the future. Oh, and if your cellphone gets destroyed, you die. It’s a battle royale where the last person alive becomes a god to replace the one that’s currently dying. The characters are amazing and the action is intense.

Oh, and did I mention that this has the greatest character of all time?

Here’s the PV, but you don’t even fucking need it. Just watch the anime and come back here singing praises of my wisdom.

Guilty Crown

A shounen that looks good for once? Sign me the fuck up.

Apparently the MC can pull weapons out of people and shit. There’s fighting and blood and shit. It’s fucking glorious.

Best of all, this shit has the director from fucking Death Note of all things, combined with brilliant character designs. I am going to love the fuck outta this one.

Hunter X Hunter

Hunter X Hunter reboot? Well, it’s not like they could continue the series, I guess. Mr. Mangaka has been all tsundere about it, and it really jumped the shark with the chimaera ant arc.

But I am curious about what they’re gonna do with it. I enjoyed the original series, and it didn’t have the pacing issues that Dragon Ball Z did. So… is it just gonna be a prettier animation? Not really seeing the need here.

Oh well, if it gets this series the recognition it deserves, that’ll be fine too. I know I’ll be watching it.

Chihayafuru

I am incredibly excited about this show. Why? The manga is fucking ace. It doesn’t need to rely on cute girls with huge breasts or sexual themes or violence or amazing visuals. At its heart lies an amazing story and characters that really show what quality manga can truly be like. Don’t get me wrong; I love all that stuff. I’m thoroughly entertained by it. But this is going to be worth watching because it stands on its own merits.

Fuck the preview. I’m only including it to fit the theme I’ve already set. What I want you to do is read the manga. Just a bit, even the first chapter. If you don’t like it, fine. But if you do? Well then, you’re fucking welcome.

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai (Love Me Seriously)

Softcore hentai with a plot. You know if this is for you or not.

Busou Shinki: Moon Angel (Battle Masters: Moon Angel)

This is Beyblade, except the spinning tops are sexy half-robot girls. If you’re anything like me, you primarily watch anime so you can match the characters to the faces of the jpegs that you fap/schlick to. I have a lot of Busou Shinki pictures that can now be used. Thank you, Japan.

And it’s only five minutes long, which is all the time I need.

C3: Cubed x Cursed x Curious

Another seemingly pretentious anime called C? WHY THANKS, JAPAN. I DIDN’T GET ENOUGH OF THAT THE FIRST TIME.

Wait, wait. This is actually gonna be good? Hells yeah!

See, this anime is gonna rock my dick off because the women are all mad with bloodlust and ready to fuck the shit up of anything that moves. You can tell this in the trailer starting when you see a girl smoking a cigarette. Why? Cuz in Japan, smoking make you a fucking badass. See: Balalaika.

The trailer heats up with women grinning like mad as they slice the shit out of each other indicating plenty levels of badassery incoming. Please god, let this be as good as it looks.

Violent, zany comedy about bentos. Need I say any more? This is gonna rock.

Fate/Zero

Ah, the Fate series… Generic, dull plot with generic character archetypes. BUT AT LEAST IT LOOKS PRETTY, RIGHT?

… Actually, that’s a good point. It’s going to be the prettiest shit all season, except for maybe Last Exile 2. IMO, add this to your queue and watch the fuck out of it. Why? Cuz mindless entertainment is fun and something doesn’t need to be “good” to be enjoyable.

Here’s the trailer.

Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon (Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere)

Fights. Babes. Robots.

This looks fucking brilliant.

Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam (Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing)

Very few shows do steampunk as well as Last Exile did. The first season’s beautiful visuals from 8 years ago are still as relevant now as they were back then. The world of Last Exile is insanely inventive and captivating, and I need to prepare myself for the eyegasm Fam will undoubtedly bring.

Oh, and it’s a stand-alone series compared to the first one, so you don’t need to watch that if you want to watch this.

Un-Go

It’s Bones. It’s a story about a detective. It’s Bones.

If you aren’t convinced about this show, get convinced. You’ll thank me for it later.

Persona 4

Ohmigod one of the greatest games of all time now in anime form! Be still, my–

Okay, let’s be brutally honest with each other here: Persona 4 is gonna suck. It’s going to suck hard, and you’re going to wish it never happened. Then you’re gonna laugh with your buddies about how “Oh wow, a Persona anime would be totally great because y’know, they never made one hahaha.”

Stop right fucking there.

Don’t even play this shit off like it was ever a good idea. Persona works because it’s a combination of dungeon crawling and dating sim/friendship simulator. It’s fine-tuned to create one of the — if not the — best RPG systems around. Now pause for one fucking second and think how this is going to work in anime form. Yeah, exactly. It won’t. They already tried this with Trinity Soul, which was shit.

Of course, I’m a sucker. I’ll watch the shit out of this, as will you. I’m just tempering my expectations so I don’t cut my wrists after the first episode fails to blow my mind. It could end up quite good, and I really want it to be that good, but I’m not holding my breath.

Here’s the trailer:

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (I Don’t Have Many Friends)

This is basically pathetic pandering to NEETs and otaku, saying “Hey, these cute boys/girls don’t have any friends either! Watch them go on all kinds of crazy adventures and have fun with one another. Never fear, lonely otaku, this could be you one day! Now, may we direct your attention to the high-quality plastic figures we’re selling for $200 and the anime DVDs with two episodes that we’re selling for $80?”

But fuck it, that’s no different from any of the other animes this season. The art is incredibly beautiful, and the manga is really good. Sign me up.

Will Probably Suck

Phi Brain: Kami no Puzzle (Defy Brain: God’s Puzzle)

Boring alert!

This is supposedly some anime about solving puzzles. The art is dull and it appears to have the pacing a legless turtle.

Tamayura: Hitotose

Do you like dull anime that never goes anywhere and takes 30 minutes for a character to walk five feet? Well, you’re gonna fucking love this slice-of-life anime. Honestly, I think slice-of-life fans spend their free time collecting stamps and licking walls. You have to be half-retarded to enjoy something as paceless as this genre.

For you sliceys, I guess I oughta give you a fair description of what you’re getting into. You have a cute girl that has a camera and she– Wait, what’s that? Slow down? Oh, I’m going to fast for you? k, let’s break this down for Shamalamadipshit over here.

Mashiroiro Symphony (Pure White Symphony)

Oh wow, another boring, shitty romance anime. THANKS A LOT, JAPAN. Glad to see the radiation hasn’t affected your ability to make terrible rehashes of the same overplayed concept.

Set in a Japanese high school, Joe EveryJapaneseMan attempts to find the love of his life among a cast of interchangeable heroines. Which generic girl will he choose? The suspense is killing me!

Battle Spirits: Heroes

Let me preface this by saying I love TCGs. And this is an anime based on a TCG. My name (Dark_Sage) even comes from a Yu-Gi-Oh! card. I loved Weiss Survive and fuck me, I loved Duel Masters. But this is a shitty anime based on a shitty TCG.

I have a few Battle Spirits starter decks and I tried to get some fun out of this shitty game, but there’s none to be had. The biggest problem is that the cards are all so lifeless. There’s no incentive to buy another pack to get that cool looking card, because there ARE NO COOL LOOKING CARDS. In fact, let me just pull out a deck right now and list off some of these cards I see:

And the monsters only get worse. Why is this important? Because the cards are fucking important to a series based on a TCG. With monsters this boring, an anime can only be absolute shit. I watched a bit of the first season, and I can confirm that the anime actually IS shit.

Oh, and the fucking beads they include in each starter deck spill all over the fucking place. No thanks.

And yes, I pretty much just reviewed the TCG instead of the anime. Deal with it.

Lupin III

It’s Lupin the 3rd. Let’s be straight with each other. Lupin was never a very good series. It’s a very classic series, don’t get me wrong. But “classic” does not always equate to “good”. Now, in any social circle of anime fans will be “that guy”. You know, the fat, neckbearded one who only plays Nintendo games or the skinny pseudo-intellectual who thinks acting like a twat makes him smarter. What’s guaranteed is that they both like Lupin the Third and they will fucking make sure you know they like it.

Why? For the fattie, it’s nostalgia. For the anorexic, it’s ego. The fattie is obsessed with trying to remember the one time in his life where he had a future, before he became the deranged, lifeless creature he is today. The skinny prick is interested in appearing smarter than everyone else. “Oh, you haven’t seen every episode of Lupin? Ha! Your opinion is invalid! Anime these days is so shit to a connoisseur like moi! I’m going to go rewatch Kimpa the White Lion. It’s pretty good, so I bet you haven’t even heard of it.”

Kimi to Boku (You and Me)

It does have moe moe boys, so if you’re a girl it could be worth checking out, but if you’re a straight male, I don’t think this is going to appeal to you.

Maken-Ki

All right, this is ecchi and it’s incredibly stupid. It’s another one of Japan’s patented “Boy goes to school full of girls and they all fall over him because he’s just so awesome, but the boy will never actually do anything because like most Japanese heroes, he’s a worthless sack of shit with an ingrown dick, so live vicariously through him, fuckwit otaku, and pretend like any female would give you the time of day if you got past that restraining order and entered your former high school.”

Mobile Suit Gundam Age

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Japan, it’s that their children are whiny, useless pieces of shit.

You know why “the west” is so much better? Our kids don’t grow up idolizing “heroes” who get magical powers and spend half of each episode whining about it. Our boys dream about revolutions, war, and being a sword-swinging knight, fucking up everyone’s shit. Our women, too, grow up wanting to wreck people’s shit, although it’s usually other women’s feelings/lives. We’re fucking badasses.

Japanese kids aren’t.

This is an anime about Japanese kids whining about everything while they power mechanical suits of war because they have magic robot affinities. They will face adults and defeat every one of them because it symbolizes Japan’s belief that once you hit 20 your life is fucking meaningless. And they will do it with no less than ten minutes’ worth of angst and tears every episode.

Take your shit and shove it, Japan.

My top five ten picks:

1. Mirai Nikki

2. Guilty Crown

3. Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing

4. Chihayafuru

5. C3: Cubed x Cursed x Curious

6. Hunter x Hunter

7. Un-Go

8. Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

9. Ben-To

10. Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon

We’ll be picking up at least one of these to sub. If you’re a good TL and you want to do any of these series, I want you in the group. Worst case scenario, CR/TAN/Nico picks up the series and you just have to TLC it. Other positions may be open in the group depending on a variety of factors. Joints may be acceptable. Inquire within #[email protected] .

All right, guide over. Comments are down below, so agree with me to your heart’s content.

60 Comments

Whoever picks up Mirrai Nikki as a series for a group better be on top of their game, that’s a series with alot of hardcore fans, this show is not for a weak sub group, fans will know when you fuck up on the lines. Im just like you pissed at tokoyo pop messing with my collection, loyal follower of the series. Good luck to any group who picks up mirrai nikkki this is a show you cant fake on subbing, all I know they will most likely need to be on their game when it comes to typesetting it will be a nightmare of diary entries lol.

I can see what group will pick up what series based on past releases and this is only a gut feeling. Eve taku and UTW will probably pick up Mirrai nikki, since they are on top when it comes to seamless typesetting. Subdesu and the other group hikurai i think there name is will most likely do maken ki or maji we watshi due to the high T and A. Boku wa tomadachi I can see this occurring as a nico or CR release but in terms of groups I can WHYNOT I get this feeling they will pick it up based on past releases. Persona will be a fight between groups, c 3 I see as as nico or cr and maybe gg. Fate zero and guilt crown need good group for these series, they will most likely be on cr, groups I would be interested to see who does these can’t guess on these. These are my guesses, I can see whine subs doing guilty crown to make sure no one fucks up the show same with persona if no good groups appear.

I’m a believer in sequels. I rarely get disappointed by them if the first season was good.

I would be very cautious with ‘Mirai Nikki’. This kind of mystery-game type is hard to execute IMO, and neither director nor series composition is god-tier. Although, that series and ‘Kyoukai Senjou Horizon’ are wildcards for me, could be really good if they don’t suck. Also, ‘Cross Fight B-Daman’ is probably going to be the best anime next season :trollface:

Everything else there don’t really interest me, but it does appear to be a strong season.

Actually the hero of Maken-ki is sort of like that in the beginning, but he gets better. I dunno if the anime will actually portray that or even get to the part where he gets shot. Hell I dunno if it’s even gonna follow the manga accurately. I’ll agree that it’s questionable on if it’ll be good or bad.

As a Gundam fan I want to take all the mobile suits from the other Gundam shows and blast this new one so deep into the ground they won’t even think of bringing shit up like this again. Along with what you said the character design is horrible too.

I think Gundum is a overly abused franchise, there is only so many paths Gundum can take in terms of animes before people start getting tired of Gundam. I think every anime has has a predetermined time to put an end to the series, once an anime franchise goes beyond that end point it become to over extended and whats ruined is the franchise for overly extending its endpoint. Take dragon ball Z, they knew when to rap it up maybe a little to late towards the end of the franchise but they still said its time to put a close to this franchise.

I agree the ending of mirrai nikki actually the last chapter only was below expectations but if you take into account every chapter before the last chapter, all those chapters were pretty action packed, even if you dilute half of what was in the manga and translate it into an anime it still has alot of potential to exceed our expectations, I have high hopes for the anime for one reason, if they stay true to the manga we may not be disappointed, but if the director chooses to get creative than got issues.

@Soley: I never realized we were known for typesetting. ‘_’ Anyway Mazui’s doing Mirai Nikki so we’re probably gonna pass. The manga had me hooked for a while but the ending was just… what the hell?

I’m translating Tamayura (barring Crunchyroll picking it up) because I’m a sucker for Satou Jun’ichi and I know D_S is gonna hate having to review the release. :D

Still need to watch the first Last Exile, even if the sequel is stand-alone… my OCD won’t let me skip a season even if they’re separate stories. ‘Swhy I finished the first FMA before watching Brotherhood.

I didn’t realize Mazui was going to pick up the series, I’m sorry I overlooked them since this season I didn’t see them release hardly anything I just assumed they would pick up something similar to previous releases, didn’t expect them to pick up Mirai nikki. Im the same way the series had me hooked all the way until last chapter, the last chapter I don’t know if it was rushed or they couldn’t determine a appropriate ending for the series. The series ending looked like it was a version b not the first choice ending but I’m assuming they catered to the fans for the happy ending in a series which in all honesty I expect tragic ending which would of fit the series better, nothing happy but the reality of the situation. So your picking tamayura I would not of expected that, should be interesting to see the series either way if your group is doing it.

you, my dear friend (the writer), have obviously never heard of asread, or if you did, you need to check your ability to judge, since you say whatever bones do is awesome, which isn’t really the case if you have watched everything they did.

Pretty impressive catalog of shows Bones has. So yeah I think it’s safe to assume that Un-Go is gonna be good. All these shows were good in their own way. At least Bones doesn’t use incessant Boobs and fanservice to capture their audience. Even if some do have some weird themes (No.6, etc)

Fine, let’s talk Asread. Asread is doing Animation Production on Mirai Nikki. You know what that means? It’s the fucking animation, that’s it.

And from what I’ve seen of their work, they can definitely handle animation. It’s not going to be faptabulously glorious, but you know what? It works.

The director handled Shuffle!, Koe de Oshigoto!, the Shuffle spin-off, and Minami-Ke Okaeri. The Shuffle spin-off sucked, but general opinion is that the other three he directed were pretty decent.

Let’s see who’s handling Series Composition. Oh, look. It’s only the guy who did Baka Test, Ga-Rei Zero, and ef.

The Mirai Nikki “OVA” was a fucking PV. Let’s not condemn them to hell for that. What we’re looking at is a solid staff for an amazing manga. I wouldn’t get too worried about it, although I respect the need to show skepticism.

Despite few shows that make me frustrated (Mirrai Shitty: homicidal crazy girls are sooo hot and totally don’t make me want to call the cops and run for my fucking life, Guilty Crown: people who worked with Death Note, Code GayNote and Kindergarten of the Death? It’s like a super-villain team-up, Persona 4: a jrpg with the mind-numbing grinding removed? Oh, wait that could actually work, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai: Ore no Shitmouto 2: Suicide Helpline), this is quite an interesting season.
I’ll definitely watch Hunter X Hunter, another Last Exile and Horizon.

I’m actually surprised you considered Majikoi being worth watching, as because the only promotional material out there is the PV which gives a HORRIBLY WRONG impression of the visual novel itself, which I love to death.

If they turn down, or even scrap the ecchi I can forsee, and focus on the character interactions, it may turn out into one of the funniest anime of the season.

Well, NO WONDER Tiger & Bunny has been looking so derpy lately. Three crappy shows this season for Sunrise. The only things that don’t look immediately bad or rehashes of hits last season are Chiyahafuru and Last Exile’s spin-off. It seems in the wake of Angel Beats, animators are going for that olive-oil coated look.

I’m excited for Shana because 1. I’ve seen the first two seasons and 2. JC Staff does make great action scenes when/if they bother.

I really liked Working!!, but I don’t know if it really has enough new material for a sequel. The jokes were already getting stale by the close of the first series.

My top 8 list:
1) Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (manga is great, novel is better)
2) Hunter x Hunter (Loved original series. I have high expectations for this)
3) Guilty Crown (Trailer was cool.. hopefully we get some great action/drama)
4) Working!! 2 (liked the 1st series. This will be hilarious)
5) Persona 4 (the game is awesome.. maybe this will be too..?)
6) Fate/Zero (The sequel was nice let us pray the prequel will be better)
7) Shana 3/Final (Animation looks top notch. Second season didn’t click for me, but I love the first.)
8) C3 (First preview looked cool.. not so much the second: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HrYVwlEyQU)

2 that I will watch but probably will not finish…
Phi Brain (looks *yawn~* Maybe it’ll surprise me)
Mobile Suit Gundam Age (… I don’t know if I should…)

I thought I could enjoy Maken-ki!, as it would be mindless ecchi, but I found out about the hidden faggotry within. Male characters turning into women at will and then being gay for the main male character… Yay, fuck up my anime with them traps!

He does slice-of-life, shows for pre-teen girls, and shows for little kids. Tamayura will be good for you sliceys, but Phi Brain is so far out of his comfort zone, I’m not anticipating anything good coming of it.